Years of hiking rails in the Val d’Isere park has paid off for Tignes-Spirit rider Rich Jonas, carving a path for him as a full time, globe-trotting bloke of snow. From the grey, flat lands of Stoke-on-Trent to the dizzying heights of Tahoe’s Northstar, this UK rail dazzler is all over the park scene right now.

Read on to hear how hard it can be to drag yourself out of seasonnaire never never land and into the world of frenzied film and competition…

Where have you been riding this season?

I’m hanging out in Perisher, Australia at the moment, where the terrain is kind of flat and rounded. The hills looks a bit like telly tubby land! We had a couple of weeks chilling at home after our last Northern hemisphere winter, and it was nice to do nothing for a bit as doing back to back winters can take their toll. Your old injuries, niggles and pains become more frequent from constant abuse! I totally love Australia though, and Falls Creek is my favourite place to ride. It’s sooo much fun and there’s such good people, park and good times. Tignes is also brilliant for the people, and anywhere in the states is great for riding.

What’s your current set up?

Nitro Swindle 152, Raiden Zero bindings, Nitro Recoil boots. Such a rad setup! I ride for a few companies nowadays, including Tignes-Spirit.com, Nitro, Raiden Bindings, 686, and Electric. This involves filming, doing demos, taking photos and competing enough to represent the brands and promote them in the best way you can. Also loving the skinnies skinnies skinnies all the way! I’ve got a friend who rocks the gangsta look but I don’t listen to hip hop and I’m just not really into it!

What are your plans for the coming season?

TAAAAAHHHHHOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEE!!!!!!! Love it out there. Plenty of Northstar, Boreal, Sierra and street action. Should hopefully be working with Whitespace on some filming stuff this winter. Big up Neil Mowbray! We’ll also be doing three or four podcasts to document our trip, so you can watch out for those. I’ll also be at the Brits again and hopefully compete this year. I had full intentions of competing in the slopestyle last season but the gods prevailed and threw a shit load of bad weather at us with high winds. The slopestyle was cancelled and a rail jam was in place instead, which meant I didn’t compete. Plus I’ll be at the boardtest at the end of the season. As for the new trick?? Switch front boards. I thought I had them, then I didn’t. Tried again yesterday and got em down, then BLAM, caught my nose on the rail and did a half flip. Everyone found it very amusing though!

Is it hard to prove yourself around the world when you’re a snowboarder from Blighty?

When you go overseas and meet the locals and they realise that you’re British, 90% of the time they think that you’re gonna be shit. You get the usual questions of, “do you have any resorts in the UK?”, “Don’t you ride on that ‘drymat’ stuff?” etc and it takes a little while to prove yourself. Other than that, I don’t think its too bad. There are some good developmental projects in place for snowboarders in the UK but just not enough, and the ones that do exist are way too expensive for people to get into, especially the young up and coming kids who are ultimately the future of the sport. We could do with a bit of government backing to try and push snowboarding more within the UK.

The world is ending tomorrow. List 10 things you’ve got to do today!

Go looting in town! Everyones going nuts!
Join the riots in the streets!
Haha erm spend the day with Katie
Make love! ha ha
Erm go ride
Try some triple corks cos it doesn’t matter if you hurt yourself
Do a darkslide
Go steal some booze
Drink stolen booze
Watch the world end!